Types like Object and Comparable<T> allow heterogeneous collections and algorithms, which are occasionally useful even in an otherwise statically-typed language

Types like Object and Comparable<T> allow heterogeneous collections and algorithms, which are occasionally useful even in an otherwise statically-typed language. Think of it as a set of types where otherwise you would have required boxing everything within a single type and eventually reimplementing the type system. If Java had generics from day one, they could have put methods like equals and hashCode in interfaces that some classes don't implement, instead of passing static type checks and then blowing up at runtime because you did something that never made sense.